Carve the New Path
by cupid-painted-blind
Summary: When Sirius accidentally screws up a mission and almost gets them killed, James Potter, Sirius Black, and Frank Longbottom wake up in a tent with three dead-eyed teenagers who tell them that they've got a mission, but can't give up any details, not yet.
1. Chapter 1

"Tell me," she says, voice barely a whisper, "do you believe in fate?"  
>"No," he replies, uncertain.<br>A pause, a breath, a shudder, a sob.  
>"Good," she breathes.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>carve the new path<strong>  
>"in life, you need either inspiration, or <em>desperation<em>." -anthony robbins

To James, the beginning was fuzzy, and the pieces of the puzzle never quite _fit_ - to Lily, the story was complicated and opaque, and it seemed like she was quite a bit better off not knowing all the details. What they agreed on, what they all agreed on, is that it started with a nasty mistake made by Sirius, that almost got the whole lot of them killed by Death Eaters.

The last thing James remembered was seeing wide black eyes behind a skull-like mask, hearing the whisper of _Avada Kedavra_ just beginning to form, and the sudden jolt of horror when he realized that his kneecap was shattered, and he could not run.

He woke up in a tent.

"Good morning," a voice said, and he blinked several times. The tent was tall and wide, and he was on a soft, fluffy bed, and he could hear insects outside the canvas and someone groaning off to his left, and the woman looking at him was wholly unfamiliar. She looked _exhausted_, more than anything else, her ink-dark curls pulled into a messy ponytail and dark circles under her murky eyes.

"Where am I?" he croaked, and tried to sit up, but the woman put a hand - scarred, he noticed, although the full extent of the marks disappeared into her sleeve - on his chest, pushing him back down.

"Don't try to get up yet," she said. "You're still in pretty bad shape."

"You didn't answer - " he started, but she cut him off.

"We're in... Ireland, I think? I didn't set the portkey, you'll have to ask... Evan about that."

"Ireland?" he cried, and then, "Evan? Who is Evan? Who are _you?_ Where is Lily? Sirius!" He scrambled against the woman, trying to escape the woman who was fighting just as hard to keep him in the bed. A blond man bolted in from outside and came over to help her hold him down. Panic - along with the past six months of intensive combat training under Mad-Eye Moody - rose up behind his eyes, and he made a move to roll out from the two strangers fighting with him, but then he knocked his knee against the bed and the resulting shockwave of pain stopped him dead in his tracks. "What's going on?" he shrieked, and now that he wasn't struggling so much, the two people relaxed their hold on him.

"We were - passing by," the woman said, "we saw the failed raid. We came to help you and your friends escape. Unfortunately," she added, a little hesitantly, "none of you were in good shape. The people who could apparate already were, but then the Death Eaters got a ward up, so we had to... improvise."

"You just..." he started, gaping, "_happened_ to be passing by as a pack of Aurors were conducting a raid on a secret Death Eater hideout?" He cast about for his wand in desperation. "I don't buy that for a hot second," he snapped, and then the man did something strange. He took out his own wand and handed it to James.

"Here. Oh, and," he added, walking over to a little shelf that was set up on the other side of the tent, bringing back what looked like the clothes he had been wearing, neatly folded in spite of the tears and the bloodstains, his wand sitting on top of them, "here's yours. And - Jean," he said, voice jerking slightly on her name, "why don't you give him your wand, too?" She did so, eyes strikingly blank. "There. You've got all the power."

The man took a seat on a little stool beside his bed, and leaned on his knees. "We're not lying to you. I promise you that - we won't ever lie to you."

James stared at him uncertainly, and looked around the tent for more information. On the other side of the man lay Sirius, ghostly-pale, on another bed, and on the other side of Sirius, Frank Longbottom was also asleep. "So," he began, "let me get this straight. You were just... passing by, and you decided to jump in and save us, and now you're... taking care of us in some tent somewhere in... Ireland?"

The man and the woman - Jean? Was that her name - glanced at each other. "More or less," Jean replied. "It's... complicated. We knew about the Death Eaters, and... we'd been... well, watching the hideout for a while."

"Why were you...?" James asked, trailing off in confusion. Jean wouldn't meet his eyes.

"It's our job," she said.

"No," James countered, laughing a bit at the absurdity of all of this, "no, I'm pretty sure that's _my_ job. Or, will be, when I finish my mentorship. You're not Aurors," he continued, still laughing, but not in humor, "it's not your job to fight Death Eaters."

"No," the man replied, "it isn't. We're on a different kind of mission."

"Oh?" James prompted, raising an eyebrow. "_Do_ tell."

"It's classified," the man answered immediately, "for now, at least. Suffice it to say, our job involved being there."

"And what job is that?"

"We can't tell you that," he replied in his strange monotone. He glanced to Jean, but her blank eyes gave nothing away.

"You said you wouldn't lie to me. You promised, didn't you?" he challenged, propping himself up on his elbow. "So tell me the truth."

"I can't," the man said. "And I never said I would tell you everything, just that I wouldn't _lie._ The truth is: I can't tell you what my job is."

"Fine," James said, scowling. "What's your name, then? And when can I go home to my fiance?"

"Evan," the man replied shortly, "and as soon as you and your friends are well enough."

"We aren't really healers," Jean admitted, sighing. "But we've got plenty of field experience," she added with a melancholy smile. "We'll get you fixed up all right, don't worry, but it'll take a little time. A week or so, at the most, I would guess."

"A week," James repeated. "And you can't just take us to St. Mungo's because...?"

They glanced at each other, and then Jean sighed. "Officially, we don't exist. We can't go around in public. That's... the next thing." She winced. "You didn't see us, all right? You can play the hero if you like, claim that you grabbed - your friends," she said, like she was correcting herself mentally, "and whisked them away until all three of you were well enough to apparate."

"So if you don't exist," he began, "where'd this mission come from?"

"We can't tell you that," they both replied at the same time, monotonous voices in perfect unison. It was downright _eerie._ James growled.

"All right, then, who do you report to? The minister?"

"Dumbledore," Evan answered curtly. "Although he doesn't know it yet."

"You realize how suspicious you sound, right?"

Evan raised an eyebrow. "You've still got our wands, and your own. Trust me when I tell you that my very last intention is to hurt you, your family, or your friends in any way, shape, or form, for any reason."

That, James thought, was an awfully specific promise. "Right," he said, making up his mind _not_ to trust this guy - or his creepy friend - at all. "So, this mission is just the two of you, running around with a giant tent, watching Death Eaters, and... playing nursemaid?" On second thought, maybe they weren't secretly plotting to kill him. Maybe they were just _insane._

"There's one more with us," Jean said, and her voice was strangely cold. "He's on lookout right now. His name is Roland."

"Lookout?"

Jean nodded. "We've got plenty of wards set up to hide us, but it's good to have someone watching out anyway."

"That's a bit... paranoid," he said uncertainly, and Jean smiled weakly.

"Yes, well," was all she said to that. He peered at the two of his keepers - they both looked like all the life had been plucked straight out from behind their eyes, like their souls had been murdered and left to hang over their heads like a sword of Damocles. If he hadn't heard them speak, he might have thought they'd gotten a kiss or two from a dementor. And they didn't _sound_ evil, just tired and empty and completely broken.

He couldn't pin down their ages; the haggard pallor on their faces was undoubtedly aging them. Still, they couldn't be more than twenty or so - what could possibly have happened to make people so young look so shattered?

There was something vaguely familiar about Evan, but it was hard to figure out; Jean was an enigma entirely. She might have been pretty, if she didn't look like she'd spent the last year or so in Azkaban - her cheeks were hollow and her eyes too large for her face, a muddy green that probably would have been enchanting if they didn't seem to be so _empty._ Her lips were cracked and reddened and there were red marks around her eyes like she'd been rubbing them angrily for a very long time.

Evan didn't look much nicer than Jean. His eyes, a similar muddy color to Jean's, were slightly redder and puffier like maybe he'd been crying earlier, and his cheeks were rounder, but sagging somewhat, like his skin was just giving up on staying where it was. His hair was a dirty blond but his eyelashes were dark, and it looked like he hadn't really taken care of himself in a while.

He'd been sitting in silence - barring the near-continuous low groaning coming from Sirius - with the Creepy Twins for the better part of five minutes, and the awkwardness was just starting to really dig in, when the third member of their party slunk in through the tent flap. Jean looked at him and nodded. "My turn for guard duty," she said, and stood up, smoothing her strikingly _clean_ skirt out with meticulously-kept hands, and then swept out of the tent.

The third Creepy Twin was less creepy than the others, but that might have been because he looked slightly _healthier_. He was taller than either of the others, and though his black hair and freckled skin made him look a bit sickly, his eyes were the only ones that seemed to have any life left in them. "So, you're awake," he said, taking Jean's now-free seat. "How d'you feel?"

"Confused," James replied, and the man - what had Jean said his name was? - smirked.

"Yeah, I get that," he muttered, and stuck his hand out. "Call me Roland," he said, and James shook his hand. It was surprisingly strong and calloused for someone who looked only slightly less dead than his companions.

"Roland," he repeated. "Got it. I'm James."

"Yup," Roland replied, nodding, and then winced as Evan shot him a look. "You didn't say anything to him, I take it?"

"No, but I guess now I don't have a choice," Evan growled, a bit sourly. Roland shrugged.

"You know who I am?" James asked, trying to sit up again and glaring at Evan. "How?"

"It's part of our job," he replied, "to know things."

"That's a great explanation, Ev," Roland said, clapping sardonically. "You really nailed that one."

And then James realized why Roland seemed more alive than the other two - Jean and Evan had given up, but Roland was _angry._ "I guess you can't tell me the details, huh?" he mused, and Evan nodded sharply. "So, your job entails being at Death Eater hideouts and also knowing _things._ What sorts of things?"

"All sorts," Roland replied, waving a hand. "We know lots of things."

"We can't give you details," Evan said between clenched teeth, glaring at Roland, who merely shrugged again.

"Whatever, you're the boss," he said, and muttered something under his breath, but James couldn't tell what. "I'm gonna go out and bird-watch with Jean. Call me if anything interesting happens," he added, and stalked out of the tent.

"So what crawled up his arse and died?" James asked conversationally, and then caught himself. "No, let me rephrase that. What crawled up _all _your arses and died?"

Evan looked at him with hollow eyes, and said, "The world."

* * *

><p>Sirius woke up, vaguely aware that there was a rhino sitting on his chest and something with claws trying to get out of his throat. He tried to speak, but all that came out was, "Blughth." Luckily, someone heard this and interpreted it to mean, "Water, please, and any opiates you happen to have on your person."<p>

"Hello, Sirius," an unfamiliar voice said, and tilted his head up to let him drink. The water had a bitter aftertaste, and he thought for a horrible second that he was in the clutches of the Death Eaters, but then the pain lessened some - no Death Eater would ever give him a painkiller. Wincing and coughing against the terrible-tasting thing he'd just been given, he managed to open his eyes.

He was in a... tent? A woman with black hair and muddy eyes was looking at him and holding a cup in her hand. "How is that? Do you need more?" she asked, and he nodded. She helped him take another deep drink, and when it had had time to kick in, he was aware enough to speak.

"Who are you?" he croaked, and she smiled tightly.

"Jean," she replied. "Don't worry, you're safe."

Well aware that "safe" was always a relative term, he struggled into a half-sitting position and looked around the room he was in. Sure enough, it was a tent, with four beds in a row against one canvas wall. On his left was James, a magazine over his face from where he had apparently fallen alseep while reading it - which was good, since it meant that he'd been awake at some point - and on his right was Frank Longbottom, who looked about as cheerful as Sirius felt, but was also awake, so he was willing to tentatively accept Jean's theory that they were safe. "Where am I?" he asked, but Frank snorted.

"Don't even try, mate," he said coldly. "They won't tell us anything."

"Why not?"

"We can't," Jean answered sympathetically. "It's a very long story. Once you're well enough to travel, we'll get you back to your homes and families, all right?"

Frank sneered at this, clearly not trusting Jean even as far as he could throw her, but Sirius was too woozy from the pain and the painkillers to be hostile. Vaguely, he was glad that he had been rescued, even if the circumstances were curious at best. Waking up stuck in a tent with a strange woman who insisted that she couldn't tell them anything was still miles and miles better than waking up in Voldemort's clutches. "Sure, yeah," he replied airily, and then glanced at James. "He's okay, yeah?"

Jean nodded. "He is. He woke up before either of you did, and he's in much better condition as well."

"Good," Sirius said, and then Frank growled. Oh, right, he thought, Frank was his Mentor - and Sirius wasn't exactly acting like the epitome of Auror training right about now. "Come off it, Frank, we're alive, aren't we?"

"Doesn't mean you can relax. We don't know we can trust these people."

"Please," Jean said evenly, "take my word for it. James has my wand - and Evan's, as well."

Something within Sirius stirred - how did she know James's name? And who was Evan? And why would _anyone_ give their wand to someone they'd never met before? And then he recalled that she'd greeted him by name when he'd woken up. "How d'you know our names?" he asked, and Frank snorted again.

"She won't tell us that, either," Frank said coldly. "Just that it's her job to know."

"What are you, an Unspeakable or something?" Sirius asked, slightly aware that she wouldn't be able to say yes even if it was true.

"No," she replied, "but I have an important mission. You and James are... part of it, in a way."

"Oh? First I've heard of it."

"I know."

"Care to elaborate?"

"No," she answered curtly. "I'm sorry, but I can't, not right now. When you're well enough to travel, we'll take you back to your homes, and then we have to speak to Dumbledore. Then," she added, sounding exhausted, "we'll be able to tell you more."

"Fair enough," Sirius replied, and heard Frank splutter beside him. Frank was an excellent Auror, partly because he was so anal-retentive it was a wonder that anything escaped the gravitational pull of his arse, and Frank didn't like anything that he didn't understand in full. Sirius, meanwhile, listened to his gut more than his head and his gut said that Jean wasn't out to hurt him. "Look, Frank," he started, knowing that he'd probably be looking at a _monster_ of a write-up after this was over, "it makes sense. She's on a mission that she can't tell us about until she briefs her leader about it. What would you do if I went around talking about a mission before I'd told you all the details?"

He knew the answer: eviscerate him, and then string his remains up for display in the Auror Headquarters. Frank scowled. "I don't trust her."

"So don't," Sirius responded. "Just keep your mouth shut and your wand trained on her and if she does anything funny, hex her and you can make fun of me for it for the rest of my life. If she doesn't," he continued, and shrugged, "then we were fine anyway. And we can say that we didn't take any unnecessary risks and that you had the 'keeping her in line' thing in the bag the whole way. Sound good?" he asked, to both Frank and Jean. Jean smiled genuinely, and it looked like she hadn't done so in a long time.

"It's all right if you don't trust me," she said, her voice distant, "but I'm not going to hurt you."

"See?" Sirius said, waving a hand, and immediately regretted it as pain shot up his shoulder. "Oh, _God_," he groaned, and Jean winced.

"Don't worry - " she started, and Sirius gave her an incredulous look.

"Don't worry? My arm's about to fall off!"

"No, it isn't," she said, and laughed just a little bit. "Your shoulder was dislocated. We relocated it and used a few basic healing spells to make sure it healed cleanly. It's going to hurt for a while, though, but it's fine."

Sirius sighed, and touched his shoulder gently. Now that he knew, he could tell that it wasn't in any real danger - the shock of the sudden pain had been nasty, but he'd had his shoulder dislocated before, so it wasn't all that bad. "You couldn't just heal it normally?" he asked. The Aurors had a rule about never going anywhere without at least one member of the raiding party trained in medicine, and he would have thought that the Unspeakables, or whoever had sent Jean on this mission, would have had something similar.

"None of us are healers," she replied gently, and he wished suddenly that Macdonald - his party's healer - was there. Thinking of Macdonald drew his thoughts to the rest of his group, and he almost jolted out of bed.

"The rest of the party!" he cried, startling Jean, "Where are they? Did they get captured?"

"No," Frank and Jean said at the same time, and then Frank scowled at Jean until she let him speak. "They got away. James and I both were going for you to help you apparate out when we got struck, and then..." he trailed off, still scowling.

"And then we stepped in," Jean finished for him. "We had surprise on our side, and it gave us enough time to get the three of you to safety."

Sirius, regardless of what his professors at school had muttered under their breath, was _not_ stupid. Unspeakables weren't the sort of people who could - let alone ever _would_ - rush in to save a bunch of Aurors who had mucked up their own mission royally, even if they were, for some unfathomable reason, also watching the same Death Eater hideout that they had been watching. And they had proved that even a pack of (mostly) well-trained Aurors couldn't penetrate the hideout's defenses and get out without severe casualty - so how had this woman and her unknown accomplices managed to do so?

She wasn't an Unspeakable, that was for sure, and he knew she wasn't an Auror - but she clearly had field training. Whatever her mission was, she'd been on it for a while, and he wondered how long she'd been hiding in this tent, gathering the information that she needed to share with Dumbledore. Judging from her haggard appearance, it had to have been a while. Also, he was reasonably sure that he hadn't gone to Hogwarts with her, although it was certainly _possible_, he thought he would probably recognize her if he had.

"How?" Frank was asking - no, _demanding_ - "They set up an anti-apparition ward."

"We have portkeys," she replied, "that we can activate with a special spell. You've heard of such things, right?"

Yes, he had, but that just made things _more_ confusing. That sort of charm wasn't taught _anywhere_, except to the highest-ranked Aurors, due to the danger inherent if the wrong kind of person knew about it, and when you couldn't tell the difference between a Death Eater and a friend, it paid to be paranoid.

"Well," she continued, when Frank nodded, "we have several of them, and they all lead to... remote places. We activated one to help you escape."

But then, he mused, glancing at Jean, that took paranoia to a whole new level. He doubted even Mad-Eye Moody would go that far - maybe he'd have _one_ portkey set up like that, but _several?_ He made a mental note to remember that tactic, because it was a damn good idea - his superiors would be impressed. (And then he remembered that his immediate superior was sitting on the bed next to him, listening to the same damn good idea, and he sighed.) "That's a bit paranoid, don't you think?" he asked, but Jean shrugged and Frank only looked uncertain.

"That's a pretty rare spell," Frank said. "How did you find out about it?"

"Hours and hours of research in the dead of the night," she replied with a weak smile.

"Because it's your job to know?" Sirius inferred, but Jean shook her head.

"No. It's the prerequisite to my job, to be able to find or create any spell that we might need."

"Alone?" Frank asked incredulously. "We have a whole committee devoted to that."

Jean sighed. "Not quite alone. Evan and Roland help some, but they have their own duties, and, well," she added with a wan smile, "they aren't very good at it anyway."

"What are their duties?" Sirius asked, making it sound as innocent as he could.

"Evan is our leader, and Roland's the tactician," she answered. "I'm the researcher."

"And the healer?" Sirius asked - it was a basic set-up for any serious kind of mission: at least one person to plan the mission, one person to lead the mission, one person to learn everything about the target of the mission, and one person to make sure that everyone else stayed in one piece until the mission was over. Jean had apparently heard this set-up, but she looked at him with haunted eyes.

"She didn't make it," Jean said, and Sirius's heart fell - there were _four_ beds, but three people here. That explained at least some of the paranoia. They'd already lost one of their number, and Sirius knew that watching a friend die would make anyone jump at shadows for at least a while afterward.

"I'm sorry," Frank murmured, looking distinctly less hostile than he had before. Mutual suffering could make any two people friends, and both Sirius and Frank recognized at least some of the ghosts behind Jean's eyes. And, well, she and her friends _had_ saved their lives. Whatever that was worth in this climate, when darkness prowled the streets and the whole world was paralyzed at the thought of a _name_ - it meant, at least, that they were allies.

"Wasn't your doing," she replied bluntly.

* * *

><p>AN: I debated for a long time about whether or not to post this for the public, but I eventually decided to go ahead and do it. As a fair warning, updates on this will be _slow. _It is not one of my top priorities, but the story idea has been lingering in my head for, jeez, years and years now and I finally decided to give it a shot. Can you guess where it's going? It'll become obvious soon enough, but there's a lot going on here that isn't what it seems to be. Tell me what you think! I'm very nervous about this, since it's quite a bit more ambitious than anything else I've written, and I'm a bit rusty on my Harry Potter.


	2. Chapter 2

**carve the new path  
><strong>_desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius. -benjamin disraeli_

The next time James woke up, Sirius was awake as well, and he almost fell over himself trying to sit up properly.

"You all right there?" Sirius asked, sounding terribly amused, and James relaxed a little - if Sirius was joking, Sirius was all right, or would be, at least.

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled. "Where are our... friends?" he added the last word with more than a little disdain. He didn't like questions that didn't have answers, and he _really_ didn't like people who constantly evaded all of his questions, but on the other hand, pity and horror burned in his chest as the memory of the three strangers and their blank eyes.

"Outside, conferencing about... something," Sirius answered, shrugging with only one shoulder. "Not really sure." He glanced at James shrewdly. "What d'you think?" he asked, and didn't have to elaborate. James swung his legs over the side of the bed, testing his knee - it still hurt like _hell_, but it was better than before.

"I don't trust them," he replied in a low voice. "I'm not saying I think they're Death Eaters or anything, but there's something off about them."

"Frank doesn't trust them either," Sirius said, like it was a response.

"You?"

"I don't see any reason not to trust them," he replied, and James swallowed the desire to throttle his best friend. Just like Sirius, to assume that the creepy weirdos who had picked them up and swept them off to Ireland but swore that they couldn't tell them anything about this super-secret "mission" they were on were _perfectly_ trustworthy. And yet, knowing Sirius, he was probably suspicious of Frank, or something equally ridiculous. Sirius _thought_ he understood people well, but the truth was, he got along better with animals than other humans, and the more complex things about society and relationships baffled him. Oh, he was a great friend and an excellent Auror, but he was also a bloody idiot.

"Besides the fact that they won't tell us anything, were hanging around a _secret_ Death Eater hideout for no apparent reason, and have us at their mercy?" he asked lightly, even though the last part wasn't quite true: _he_ had Evan and Jean's wands, although he was pretty sure they'd still overpower him in a fight, what with his knee being like it was.

"Look, I get that," Sirius started, like he'd said this all before - and, considering Frank, he probably had - and rolled his eyes. "I just don't think they're out to hurt us. And, hell, at least they admit that they can't tell us things, rather than lie to us. I'd rather _know_ that I don't know, yeah?"

"I reiterate: _Secret. Death. Eater. Hide. Out._"

"And yet, _we_ knew about it," Sirius retorted, and James gaped.

"Typical Sirius Logic, everyone," he said, rolling his eyes. "We knew because we're Aurors, and it's our _job_ to hunt down Death Eaters. Who are they? And how would they have figured out? Have they been spying on us? Or maybe they've got a contact at HQ, I don't know. It's just weird."

"Maybe they didn't figure out from us," Sirius offered. "Maybe they figured it out the same way _we_ did: following suspected Death Eaters. It's not that hard to look at ol' Snapey and think, 'hmm, he might know where to find a wretched hive of scum and villainy,' you know?"

"All right, fine, you've got a point," James conceded, against his will and better judgment. "I still think it's weird."

"Oh, it's definitely weird as _shit_," Sirius replied, and James snorted. "But I think they're on our side. Or at least, not on _Voldemort's_ side."

"Didn't Frank ever tell you not to buy into that?" he asked. "An enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend."

Sirius gave him that same one-armed shrug. "Actually, yeah, but in some cases, I think you've gotta make exceptions. I mean, we were pretty royally fucked back there, and they saved our arses _hard._ We owe them a chance, at least."

"Not really," James countered, trying to stretch and discovering that his _everything_ was sore. "We didn't ask for their help."

"When did you become so paranoid?" Sirius asked, a teasing note in his voice, but they both knew the answer. Ever since joining the Aurors, James had buckled down and insisted on taking everything deadly serious - and even moreso now that he was planning to marry Lily. James had a lot to lose, and they all knew it. It was easier for Sirius, who had put all his eggs in the Aurors' basket and was perfectly fine as long as he knew where James and Remus and Peter were; for James, life was a constant stream of things that could _take everything away from him_.

Sirius could afford to trust, to offer chances to strangers. James couldn't.

"So, what do we do?" James asked, fiddling with his blanket and looking around with mounting desperation for a toilet.

"Play along," Sirius replied, "at least for now. We've gotta figure out what they're up to, after all. Also," he added, glancing at James, "the toilet is that way." He pointed toward the tent-flap. "Take a left right after you cross over the big hill."

"You are shitting me," James growled. "Are we wizards or not?"

"Apparently even magic can't create a fully-functioning sewer system in West Bumfuck, Ireland," Sirius replied sagely. "You'll probably need to get help walking there, and back. It's pretty humiliating. I suggest asking Evan, since Roland's kind of pissy."

James watched his friend for a long moment. "You're on pain medication, aren't you?"

Sirius grinned. "Like you wouldn't _believe._"

"Dammit, Sirius."

* * *

><p>Sirius limped out of the tent, clutching his chest with one arm and wincing at the movement of broken parts of a rib grinding into each other, but managed to shuffle into a reasonable facsimile of a relaxed posture on the ground against a large-ish rock. Evan, on lookout duty while Jean and Roland slept like the dead in the tent, glanced at him, but didn't stop his mindless digging into the ground.<p>

"That looks fun," Sirius said, and Evan smirked.

"Yeah, it's a real joy," he replied evenly, and prodded at the jar they had set outside the tent. Inside the jar was a bright blue flame, burning merrily and casting shadows on Evan's face and the tent behind him.

"All right, so what _can_ you tell me?" he asked abruptly, trying to shift Evan's attention from the fire to his guest. Evan shrugged.

"Depends on what you ask, really."

"Okay," he said, drawing the word out. "Your parents' names?" It seemed innocuous, but Evan just laughed for some reason and ran a hand through his hair.

"Funny enough, I can't tell you that."

"Oh, come on, what are the odds I know your parents?"

Evan might have scowled, but he couldn't be sure in the flickering light. "Sorry," he muttered. "Try again."

"All right," he mused, trying to stretch some parts of his body while keeping others perfectly still, "you have any pets?"

"Used to," Evan replied, "an owl, but she died."

"Well, now we're getting somewhere, yeah?" he said jovially, even though his good mood wasn't exactly catching right now, or even really sincere. But Sirius knew how to fake it, and, hell, if he had to sit in morose silence with this kid, he'd go stark-raving mad. "Got a girlfriend?"

"Used to," Evan answered, and didn't elaborate. Sirius was hit with the sudden and nasty thought that maybe Evan's no-longer girlfriend was the fourth member of the group, the one who hadn't made it. He asked as much, and Evan gave him a strange look. "Who told you we had another member?" he asked, and Sirius shrugged.

"There are four beds," he lied deftly. "But only three of you. And there's extra stuff sitting around that doesn't look like it's any of ours. I'll take your staunch avoidance of the question to mean yes?"

Evan opened his mouth as though to tell him off, and then looked away. "Yeah. She was..." he started, but shook his head. "It doesn't matter anymore."

"Bullshit," he replied lightly, and received a glare, but he didn't really think that now was the time for consoling Evan in his grief. "All right, next question: where are you from?"

Evan shrugged again. "Surrey," he answered, "but I try to forget about it."

"Didn't have the best upbringing ever?"

For some reason, he seemed to find this funny. "You could say that," he replied, snickering under his breath. Sirius failed to see the humor in the situation.

"Care to explain?" he prompted, and Evan shrugged - _again._ Sirius was starting to think that Evan didn't much care for anything.

"Not much to it. Parents dead, raised by my aunt and uncle." He poked the fire again and shuffled a bit closer to it. "I don't really have much of a family, except Jean and Roland, and, well..." he trailed off, apparently thinking of the girl who hadn't made it.

"What was her name?" Sirius asked, and a cloud passed over Evan's face. He hesitated before responding.

"Gin," he replied, and Sirius got the strangest feeling that Evan was lying.

"Gin like the drink or Jen like Jennifer, only extra-short?"

"Ginny," Evan said, "like - Virginia," he added the full name like it was physically painful. Sirius couldn't quite shake the feeling that he was somehow being lied to.

"You're not lying to me, are you?" he asked, and Evan peered at him through the darkness.

"I don't know if Jean told you," he said quietly, "but we won't ever lie to any of you. There's lots of stuff I can't tell you, but what I tell you is true."

"Yeah, sure," Sirius muttered, waving a hand and trying not to disrupt his ribcage too much. "But that leaves a lot of room to wiggle. I'm the King of Rule-Breaking, and that's one of the oldest ones in the book. Sure, what you're saying is _true_, but it might not actually apply. Hell, they teach you that one in Auror training for dealing with Veritaserum. So," he continued, thinking out loud more than trying to get information at this point, "you tell me that her name is Ginny Like Virginia, but you never said that her name _was_ Virginia, just that it's the same nick-name. Classic con move," he added, shrugging with his non-painful arm and looking up to see Evan staring at him, and then, to his surprise, burst out laughing. Not the dark, under-the-breath snickering he'd been doing earlier, but real, genuine laughter.

"I shouldn't have underestimated you," he said, and there was something horribly melancholy in his smile. "Still, I've got good reasons for keeping some things from you, understand?"

"Oh, completely," Sirius replied. "Just tell me that. I get it. I didn't press the parents' names question, did I?"

Evan rolled his eyes and relaxed a little. "Fair enough," he said, voice distant.

"Where'd you go to school?" Sirius asked, and Evan shook his head.

"Classified."

"Okay, so _not_ Hogwarts," he inferred, and then leaned forward some. "How old are you?"

"In years or mileage?" Evan countered.

"Years. I can tell you've been around the block a few times, thanks."

Evan took a deep breath. "I'm not quite sure, honestly. Since this... mission," he said delicately, "I've kind of lost track of time. I think... I'm pretty sure I'm still a few months shy of nineteen."

Sirius's blood froze.

"You're only eighteen," he said flatly, gaping in horror at Evan. "How - what - that's _insane._ How long have you been on this mission?"

"Depends on when you really consider it to have started," Evan replied enigmatically. "Either a couple of years, or my whole life."

Sirius blinked. "I'm trying to make sense of that, but I just can't... quite..."

"Sorry," Evan said, "but I can't tell you the details."

"Still, eighteen? That's... you're barely an adult!"

Evan shrugged. "Doesn't matter much, does it?"

"Why you?" he asked bluntly. "I mean, did you volunteer for this mission or what? Why couldn't any of the older, more experienced people do this? Hell, why couldn't _I_ do it? Look, I'll talk to Dumbledore, we can take this thing off your hands and let you at least, I dunno, finish your NEWTs or something, yeah?"

Evan wouldn't look at him, but instead stared blankly into the fire. "I can't tell you," he replied quietly, "but, well, there isn't anyone else."

"Bullshit. I just _volunteered_."

"It doesn't work like that," Evan said quietly. "But," he added, in an obvious attempt to turn the mood around, "I guess this means I have your full support?"

Sirius stared at Evan, trying to see beyond the boy's murky eyes, but all he saw was bitterness and sorrow. And he'd always thought he had it bad - at least he wasn't in Evan's shoes. "What's the purpose of your mission?" he asked, as evenly as he could - Frank would _kill him_ if he got himself roped into something that turned out to be a nasty trick by a pack of Death Eaters, so he couldn't agree to anything off-hand (even though he sort of already had). "I mean, you're out to kill Voldemort, wipe out the Death Eaters, plot a map of all the dark wizards in the world, what?"

Evan hesitated for a long moment, warming his hands over the fire and biting his lip hard. Finally, he answered, "Our mission is to ensure that Voldemort _can_ be killed," he replied softly. "I can't tell you any more than that."

* * *

><p>James was somewhat worried about going back to civilization. Out here in the middle of nowhere, they were absolutely <em>cut off<em>, receiving no news or seeing any signs of life beyond the occasional bird passing overhead, and while that meant that they were probably as safe as humanly possible, it also meant that he didn't know anything that may or may not be happening back at home.

He wondered if anyone at the raid had seen their saviors sweep in, or if everyone was convinced that he, Sirius, and Frank had been captured by Death Eaters. Either way, he was certain to catch (somewhat deserved) hell from Lily.

There was a vague sense of comfort here, cold as it may be - they were _safe_, after all, and he didn't have to worry about anything other than the lingering questions about their hosts, and the tent had a strange homey atmosphere about it, like it had been lived in so long that it had gained a bit of life of its own. He kept finding things in nooks and crannies and hidden under the beds and behind shelves and swept under rugs, mostly little innocuous things like an old Valentine signed from a secret admirer to an unnamed receiver, a page on basalisks that had been torn from a book, a scrap of paper from what might have been the Canterbury Tales.

It was comforting, and haunting. There was _life_ here, scattered around the tent, half-forgotten and left behind, and it almost felt like there were ghosts hiding in the corners, watching and _remembering_ but he couldn't grasp at what, exactly, made him feel that way.

He had taken to exploring the tent while Sirius and Frank finished recovering, when two of the three strangers were asleep and the third was on watch (since they never all slept at the same time), and he'd found a multitude of little things that added up to only one real, concrete answer: Evan, Roland, and Jean had been living in this tent for a while.

On his third night of secretive exploring, while Sirius chatted with Evan outside, he found the suitcase.

It was an old-timey Muggle suitcase, a dusty red, hard shell of a thing with a battered-looking clasp and a near-rotten wooden handle, but a shiny new padlock held the clasp on tight. When he tried to pick it up, he found that it was _heavy_, and something inside shifted, _clunk_-ing against the wall of the suitcase.

"Well," he muttered, "let's see what's in here. _Alohamora!_" he whispered, pointing his wand at the padlock, but it didn't budge. James scowled, and prodded it with his wand. "Fine. _Diffindo!_" Still, the padlock didn't give, which was odd, because the severing spell should have done it.

"Not gonna work," someone said from behind him, and he jolted before turning guiltily to see Roland lounging on his bed, bleary-eyed. "There's only four people who can open that case," he continued. "One of them is dead and the rest of us are too smart. Just put it back where you found it."

"What's in it?" he asked, figuring that it was, at least, worth a try.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Roland replied, glowering at him, and James shrugged.

"Yeah, actually, I would. I'll go out on a limb here and guess that you can't tell me what's in it, but hell, it was worth asking, right?" he said in as jovial a voice as he could while being glared at by a perpetually-angry stranger (albeit one who had saved his life). "Can I guess what's in it?"

"Sure, but you won't figure it out and I wouldn't tell you even if you did."

"You're a bucket of laughs," he growled, shoving the case back under the bed where he had found it, but made a mental note to look into finding a way to open it later. "All right," he said, hopping up with as much gusto as he could manage and slouching on Sirius's empty bed. "What can you tell me?"

"Not bloody much," Roland said with a glare toward the tent-flap.

"Why're you angry with Evan?" James asked, and Roland sighed, then ran a hand through his hair.

"It's not... I'm not angry at Evan," he replied, and when James shot him his best _yeah right _look, he turned away, ears a bit red. "I'm _not_. I get it, why he did - _does_," he corrected hastily, and James made a mental note of the slip-up, "what he... does. I just," he sighed, looking intently at the ceiling of the tent, and continued in a low voice, "I just wish it didn't have to be like this."

"What's stopping you from changing it?" he asked, shrugging, thinking of Lily and her firm optimism - _nothing,_ she always said, _is a lost cause._

Roland turned to him, a savage, cynical smirk on his face. "What makes you think I'm not?" he countered.

"What did Evan do?"

The smirk fell off of Roland's face abruptly. "He's done lots of things, just like the rest of us," Roland snapped, and turned away again.

It was clear that he wasn't going to get any further through this line of questioning, but it hadn't been entirely worthless: he knew that Evan had done something, probably something bad, that horribly offended Roland. Maybe Evan hadn't had a choice - apparently it wasn't so bad that Roland couldn't forgive Evan, or at least understand him - but it must have been nasty. And it had something to do with the suitcase.

"Fair enough," he grumbled. "When d'you think we can go home?" he asked, changing the subject abruptly. Roland shrugged.

"Have to ask Jean. Soon, I imagine."

"Good," he replied, still trying to be cheerful, "my fiance's gonna kill me."

Roland smiled at him in a strange sort of way, a little melancholy and a little knowing and a little jealous. "Nah," he said quietly. "She'll probably be too happy you're safe."

* * *

><p>Early the next morning, Jean roused them all from bed with an air-horn that Sirius felt should be made illegal. All five of them jolted from the beds (Evan and Roland were, somewhat uncomfortably, forced to share the empty fourth bed), screaming various spells in the direction of the ear-splitting noise, James in particular landing an <em>excellent<em> Impediment jinx on the innocent-looking air horn sitting right inside the tent, on his way from the bed to the floor in an ungraceful heap.

Once the screaming had stopped, Jean poked her head back into the tent, the closest thing to a real grin Sirius had seen dancing on her face. "Rise and shine," she said. "Time to go back to civilization."

Roland growled something about _I'm going to kill that horn_ into his pillow, and Evan groaned and curled up into a tight ball on the very edge of the bed, but Sirius managed to stand up on his own volition. He was, he noted, the only one. James was face-down on the floor and may or may not have been weeping, and Frank had fallen back onto his bed horizontally after the initial panic.

"Up," Jean called, "or I'm taking the tent down with you all still in it."

"Why are we friends with her?" Roland moaned, face still buried in his pillow.

"Troll," Evan replied shortly, much to Sirius's confusion.

Sirius stretched the less painful parts of his body and considered the merits of making himself a crutch. Deciding that it would, if nothing else, look kind of awesome (and sympathetic) for him to limp back into Auror HQ after a week missing, leaning on a single crutch and all bandaged up, he did so. He even decided to add a cool flame design to it because he couldn't _not_. (Frank snorted at him but then had to craft himself a crutch of his own, and his looked pretty sad compared to Sirius's awesome one).

James, meanwhile, was still on the floor. Jean prodded him with a foot, earning a glare, but she just raised an eyebrow and James sighed and began to get up.

"C'mon," Sirius trilled, poking the tight ball of Evan with his crutch, "if I've gotta get up, so do you."

"Why is your crutch on fire?" Roland asked blearily, and James started laughing.

"You're a _dork_," his best friend cried, snickering, but Sirius ignored him.

"Because it's awesome, that's why," he replied, turning his nose up at the rest of them.

"It's not on fire," Evan said, voice muffled in the blanket. "It's just drawn that way."

"You're not much of a morning person, are you?" Siruis asked, poking Evan again. "Come on, little one," he said in his best Obnoxious Mother voice, "you've got to get out of bed if you want to enjoy the sunshine!"

"Little bird with yellow bill," James began singing, grinning widely, and even Frank groaned, "sat upon the windowsill, _cocked_ his little head and said, _ain't you shame, you sleepyhead_." Sirius shuddered - when he'd been living at James's place back during Hogwarts, Mrs. Potter had woken him up every single day, without fail, by singing that annoying little song _over and over_ until he finally got up to cast a silencing charm. Which she would inevitably just cancel right back out and go on singing, to make him get up.

James's personality, Sirius had discovered that year, was genetic.

"You'd better get up," Sirius said sagely, "or he'll keep singing that til you do, and then I'll kill _you_ for getting it stuck in my head."

"You'll kill me?" Evan repeated, still burrowed in his blanket while Roland, grumbling, got up. "Not him?"

Sirius snorted. "He's my best friend, that means he's safe from my wrath. You, on the other hand, are _not._"

James began singing the little song again, in a high falsetto that sounded disturbingly like his mother, and Evan finally rolled out of bed, looking both amused and - weirdly - sad. "Lookit that!" James cried, once the song was over. "Mum always did know best."

"Yeah, she raised you," Frank growled, limping toward the tent-flap where Jean was busy packing things into a tiny beaded purse. "I'm surprised she didn't go insane."

"You're just jealous of my fabulous singing voice," James replied, and everyone - even Jean - snorted. He scowled. "Yeah, yeah, I'm not winning any singing contests. Don't you people know sarcasm?"

"No," Sirius replied evenly, following Frank out of the tent and ignoring James half-hearted attempt to trip him. Outside, it wasn't even light out. Frank stood beside the little jar with Jean's blue flame flickering in it, shivering a little in the morning chill, and stared off into nothing, all of the humor gone from his face. "What is it?" he asked, and Frank sighed.

"I don't really know," he replied softly. "I just can't shake the feeling that something bad is coming."

"Something bad's always coming," Sirius said, leaning heavily on his crutch. "We'll handle it."

"Don't look so down!" James cried, bouncing out of the tent cheerfully. "We're going home today! I get to see Lily, and you can see Captain!"

"That's right," Frank said sardonically, "Sirius has probably been _lonely_ without his doggy." Sirius glared at Frank for the innuendo, but didn't comment. Frank had been teasing him since day one about his affection for dogs, and in particular the little black-and-white mutt that Sirius had found and rescued outside the Ministry and which sometimes still followed him to work.

Evan and Roland grumbled their way out of the tent and began casting spells around them to remove all evidence that they'd been there, while Jean shrunk the tent and placed it carefully into her bag. Soon, all that was left was the six of them, standing around the little jar. It was oddly sad.

"All right," Evan said, rummaging through Jean's bag and pulling out a Drooble's Best Blowing Gum and handing it over to Frank, a strange, closed expression on his face ("Dibs," Sirius called, and James glared at him). He muttered a spell under his breath and the candy glowed bright for a moment. "In thirty seconds, that'll take you back to Auror Headquarters," he said firmly. "Please don't tell anyone about us. We'll be in touch."

Sirius started to say something - maybe _thanks_ or _goodbye_ - but then there was a jerk behind his navel, and Ireland disappeared.


	3. Chapter 3

**carve the new path**  
>"it is better to offer no excuse than a bad one." — george washingon<p>

Lily was one of the first to know.

She'd spent the better part of the past week living at the Ministry of Magic, along with Remus Lupin, Alice Longbottom, and Augusta Longbottom; officially, they all had separate jobs in separate departments, but somehow found their work gravitating toward the Auror office. Generally, Lily's Ministry work was a nine-to-five thing, and she usually viewed overtime as something that happened to other people, but for the past week, she'd picked up every difficult case, every minute detail of paperwork, every little form to fill out and file - and her supervisor let her, because he knew.

Lily wasn't working. She was_ not_ going home. Because going home would mean looking at the couch she and James had bought together and the bed that they still argued about needing to be replaced and the clothes sitting pointedly at the washer and the haphazard bookshelf that neither of them had yet worked up the motivation to organize and the big box of "supplies" that Mum had sent and both were too afraid to open and his broomstick sitting in the yard and — and — and

She had tried. The first night, when Moody had come to her and said _Things went wrong on the raid. Potter, Black, and Longbottom are missing._ She had nodded, and thanked him for telling her as much, but of course _missing_ is not the same as _dead_ and she was perfectly all right, thanks very much.

She had made it all the way home, rolled her eyes at the laundry and sighed at the bookshelf and then laid down in bed and all of a sudden he wasn't _there_. She told herself it was stupid, because she was usually home before he was, but — he wasn't going to come in later that night and crash into the bed behind her and kiss her on the shoulder and —

And what if he never would again?

Because _missing_ is not the same as _dead_ but neither are the same as _safe_.

So after spending half a night in their bed, staring at the wall with tears leaking unchecked from her eyes, she had gotten up, taken a shower, put on fresh clothes and makeup and _left._ When she got to the Ministry, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in spite of the fact that the sun wouldn't rise for hours, Alice had greeted her, looking remarkably similar. They had stared at each other for a moment, and then nodded, and then set to work.

She, like the handful of others who couldn't face their homes, had simply set up shop, of sorts, in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts department. It was a small one, but Arthur Weasley was _so_ nice and never asked anything of them, and after the first half-night, Molly Weasley had started coming up to the Ministry with blankets and pillows and lovely dinners and soothing teas and hot cocoa. Molly tried very hard to make it feel like a slumber party for them, and Lily was terribly grateful for it.

It was there, on the floor of Arthur's tiny office, drinking hot cocoa and trying to remember the last time she slept, that the news filtered in.

_Some men just appeared up at Auror HQ!_

She ran into Sirius and Frank on the way down, each helping the other limp toward the fireplaces.

"Ah, Lils," Sirius said cheerfully, like her heart hadn't suddenly vanished. "You're a sight for sore eyes."

Lily stared blankly, her whole gut locked up and frozen, while Alice and Augusta swarmed Frank. Remus rushed up from behind her and ran to help Sirius.

"James," she managed to choke. "Where — Where's James?"

Sirius sobered at this, but then pushed forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Relax, Lily," he said kindly. "James is fine. Better than either of us, even, which is why old Mad-Eye's making him stay up there and debrief while we get on to St. Mungo's." He smiled then, more sincerely than usual. "You should run on up, maybe you can save him from Mad-Eye's wrath?"

Lily laughed then, leaning weakly against the wall until her legs started to give out and her laughter turned to crying. It was Augusta who came over and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her back up.

"Why is she crying?" Sirius asked, alarmed, watching Lily like he was afraid she was going to break.

"She's had a long week," Augusta replied shortly, guiding her towards the lifts. Halfway there, Lily reigned herself in, standing up tall.

"Thank you," she said quietly, and Augusta nodded.

Lily ran the rest of the way up to the Auror Headquarters.

* * *

><p>James felt like he would give up more or less the entire Potter fortune for a single picture of Mad-Eye's face when they appeared in the middle of the Auror Department of the Ministry of Magic, all holding onto the same candy and looking like hell. Mad-Eye, he noticed, didn't seem to have slept, and neither did any of the handful of people (mostly from the failed raid a week ago) who were still lingering at work at four o'clock in the morning.<p>

"Well, hello," Sirius chirped, and then everyone started talking at once.

"Where_ the hell_ were you?" Mad-Eye roared, while Macdonald rushed forward to help Sirius.

"It's kind of a long story," James replied, wincing. Mad-Eye was about to make his life miserable. At least Sirius's mentor had been there and knew why they couldn't talk about what had happened, but Mad-Eye Moody wasn't exactly known for just letting anything go. Sure enough, Mad-Eye gave him a look that could stop a rampaging dragon. Sirius, nearly unnoticed, unwrapped the gum and popped it into his mouth.

"Sirius!" Macdonald cried, glaring at him. "We could have used that to trace back to where you came from!"

James tried not to smirk while Macdonald berated his best friend; it was impressive, he figured, that Macdonald actually thought Sirius would do something like that by accident. "Sorry," he replied, voice muffled, "but I love this flavor, and I have dibs."

Mad-Eye saw straight through Sirus's attempt at faking stupid, but didn't comment on it (yet). "Macdonald, take Longbottom and Black to St. Mungo's. Potter, debrief."

James manfully resisted the urge to whimper, but only just. He followed Mad-Eye into his office and found himself quite unhappily seated opposite the desk that he only ever used to hold dark detectors and occasionally give a a sound thrashing. The last time James had sat in this chair, he was interviewing with each of the senior Aurors to see who would become his mentor, and he had not felt much better about his chances of coming out of the room alive.

At least then he'd had the excuse of being an idiot just graduated from Hogwarts and stuffed full of self-importance. Now he knew too much about Mad-Eye to be so optimistic. Alastor Moody notoriously held his students to a considerably higher standard than he did the rest of the world.

"Talk," Mad-Eye growled, and James summoned up every ounce of courage he possessed.

"With all due respect, sir, I... can't," he replied, swallowing hard and meeting his mentor's eyes. He'd once been told, by Kingsley Shacklebolt, that Mad-Eye had chosen him as his student because he had been the only one — Sirius included — who had sat up straight, looked him in the face, and answered every question confidently; that Mad-Eye had chosen him because he didn't flinch under pressure. He respected courage and even, to a point, defiance (though not when directed at him), and James was banking on that respect to save his life.

"Oh?" his mentor said, voice dangerous, and James almost cringed. Just then, salvation arrived in the form of someone knocking on the door hesitantly. "You are not allowed in," Mad-Eye barked to the door.

"Okay!" a voice that might have belonged to Dorcas called from behind it. "Just... Miss Evans is here, to see Ja - Mister Potter." Relief and terror flooded him in equal measure. Lily was here, at four o'clock in the morning, which was as sweet as it was frightening. She was going to _flay him alive._

"You're not excused," Mad-Eye said. "Explain."

"It's... strange, sir," he answered, struggling to keep his voice from breaking like a scared fourteen-year-old. "And I can't give any details." Was this, he wondered, how Evan and Roland and Jean had felt, unable to lie or to tell the truth?

"Why not?" Mad-Eye asked curtly.

He considered his options, and how much he could safely say without also getting his face hexed off. "We were rescued from the raid, sir, by agents working on... a classified mission."

Mad-Eye blinked. "I'm Head Auror, boy," he snapped, "nothing's classified for me."

"This one is," he replied quickly with as much strength as he could muster. "They claimed to report only to Dumbledore."

"Who were they?"

"I don't really know," he answered. "All they gave me were first names, and no details at all about their mission." That wasn't strictly true — Evan had mentioned something about it to Sirius, who had told him — but he was already treading on thin ice. And Lily was waiting, probably worried and maybe still in her pajamas, while he shivered under Moody's glare.

"And what makes you think they aren't agents of Voldemort?" Mad-Eye asked.

"They _did_ save us," he replied, "and nursed us back to health. They could have been deep-cover agents," he added thoughtfully, "but it doesn't feel right. We didn't give them any information of course, just in case." He neglected to mention that most of that was because they already knew everything there was to say, but luckily, his skimping on the truth wasn't enough to set off Mad-Eye's sneakoscope.

Mad-Eye peered at him for a moment longer and then relaxed slightly. "I'll send a message to Dumbledore," he conceded gruffly. "You will tell him everything."

It would have to do. He really hoped that it meant Mad-Eye trusted him — enough, maybe, to spare him from the vicious round of dark-detecting spells, usually standard for anyone who had been MIA but was especially brutal in the case of Mad-Eye.

Naturally, he was disappointed. And when his mentor finally released him, it was with a glare and an "I expect you to stay here or go to St. Mungo's until Dumbledore gets here. _Nowhere_ else, and nowhere without myself or another senior Auror. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," he replied, because he did — until Mad-Eye had confirmation that his story checked out, he would assume nothing but the worst - even if it annoyed the hell out of him. He had really been looking forward to going back to sleep, in his own bed.

The minute he opened the door, a body hit him full in chest.

"James!" Lily cried, throwing her arms around him, hands clutching his shirt like she was afraid he'd disappear again. "You're all right!"

"Yeah," he said, suddenly and powerfully aware of how much he had missed her. "I'm okay. I've still got to report to Dumbledore, though."

She pulled away from him at this, and he finally got a good look at her face. It was obvious she had been crying lately, and something inside of him ached at the thought of Lily spending the whole last week crying over his apparent death. "Dumbledore? Not Mad-Eye? What's going on?"

"It's... complicated," he replied, mind already made up to tell her everything once he was out of Mad-Eye's earshot. "I'll explain later."

"You'd better," she warned, voice cracking a little. "You had me worried_ sick_."

"I'm sorry," he breathed, pulling her into a tight hug and burying his face in her hair. "I'm sorry."

* * *

><p>"Uh-oh," Sirius muttered, when James walked in, followed by Dumbledore.<p>

"Gentlemen," the professor said amicably, "I don't believe I need to tell you why we're here."

"You weren't supposed to say anything," Sirius muttered, and James wrinkled his nose, looking around the room like a half-scared rabbit.

"Yeah, you look Mad-Eye in the face and tell him you can't give him any information on where you've been for the past week. I'll get started on your funeral."

That was, he had to admit, a pretty good excuse. "Professor," he started, but Dumbledore held up a hand.

"I've already spoken to them," he said. "While you went to the Auror Headquarters, they came to me."

"So..." James began, "why are you here? It's not like we can tell you anything new."

"I have come to you with a request," Dumbledore replied gravely, and Sirius winced in anticipation, knowing where this was going. A quick glance at his friends told him that they did, too. "The three of them are on a mission of utmost importance and will require aid in accomplishing it."

"You want us to join their mission," Frank deadpanned, and then scowled. "But what about our work with the Aurors, and our families? I'm not going to leave Alice behind and go gallivanting all over the country for... something."

"I have spoken to them about this, and they have agreed that perhaps Miss Evans and the younger Mrs. Longbottom may also be of value on their mission. In particular," he added, a strange shadow in his eyes, "they seemed to think that Miss Evans should certainly join you."

"No," James replied bluntly, and Sirius glanced at him. "No," he repeated. "It's not... it isn't safe."

"Lily's hardly safe as is, James," Sirius said quietly, earning a betrayed glare from his best friend. "Stop it. Auror's families are never safe, and everyone who went to school with us knows she's your weak point. Plus, as good as she is with charms and spellcraft? She can take care of herself."

"He's got a point," Frank said, half of an apology.

"You do not have to make this decision now," Dumbledore said calmly, cutting into the disagreement. "They will leave to restart their mission in a week's time. Until then, take time to recover and think it over. In one week, we will convene in my office and you may give me - and them - an answer then."

"I'm in," Sirius said abruptly, startling everyone in the room.

"Sirius - " James started, but he shook his head.

"I talked to Evan back there. You know he's not even nineteen yet? And he's been on this thing so long he doesn't even know what year it is anymore," he asked, watching the surprise and horror hit Frank, especially, with a savage sort of satisfaction. "No, there's no way I'm letting them do this on their own."

"Let's be reasonable," Frank said sharply. "Professor," he continued, looking to Dumbledore, "you believe they can be trusted?"

"Indeed," Dumbledore replied. Frank leaned forward a bit.

"You performed all of the routine dark detection spells on all three of them?" he asked, and Sirius suppressed a wince. It was a bit disrespectful, to question Dumbledore like that, but then that was just how Frank was: he questioned, he organized, he wondered. Frank survived by making it a point to know everything he could about anything he considered a threat, and he considered _everything_ a threat.

"I did," Dumbledore answered calmly, not taking any offense. "They are trustworthy."

Frank didn't look convinced, but he at least didn't challenge Dumbledore any further. Sirius chanced a look at James, to see him staring intently at his hands in a way that made his gut twist unhappily. James lived in a state of constant fear already, and this new mission was only making things more stressful. And if Siruis knew Lily, he knew that she'd jump on board the moment she discovered how young the people were, which James had to know as well.

"What about Remus and Peter?" James asked, glancing at Sirius with a significant look, but he wouldn't meet James' eyes. On the one hand, he didn't like the idea of consciously excluding two of his oldest friends, but on the other hand, this was a dangerous mission and bringing a werewolf and... well, Peter along with them would only compound the danger.

He couldn't quite swallow the taste of betrayal it left on his tongue.

"It's probably best if we keep mum about everything," he said, and James didn't look up. "I don't think we can avoid telling Alice and Lily, but..."

"Yeah," James replied gruffly, "you're probably right."

* * *

><p>"So," Frank started in a voice too low for the dawn light streaming in, "now taking all reasonable theories on who they are."<p>

James, for reasons he couldn't quite explain, stepped up and closed the curtains like they had something to hide. (Which maybe they did.) "I'll jump on it before _you_ do," he said, half-accusing, "Death Eater plants."

"Deep-cover Unspeakables," Sirius offered immediately, and James shook his head.

"No, they're a little too up-front to be Unspeakables."

"Exactly," he replied easily, "gets us off the trail."

"Good point," Frank conceded. "But wouldn't Mad-Eye have known about them? Nothing's classified for the Head Auror."

"_Deep_-cover," Sirius repeated.

"That wouldn't be safe at all," James argued. "There are _some_ people you _have_ to tell about _some_ things."

"In this climate?" Frank countered. "What do we always say about trust?"

"At some point, you have to, for some things," he shot back, with intense feeling. "Let's say they are Unspeakables, answering to Dumbledore for — whatever reason. They're playing in our field, trailing the same Death Eaters we're trailing. If they don't tell Mad-Eye to expect them, they compromise their mission, because he'd figure out about them and kill them. If they're working for the Ministry, Mad-Eye would at least know they _exist_."

James paused and let them muse over it while it sank in. "He's right," Sirius said grudgingly, and Frank nodded.

"We can't rule out the possibility that Mad-Eye _did_ know, and lied to _us_ about not knowing, though," he said. "It'd fit the deep-cover story... but it seems unlikely."

"But they don't strike me as Death Eaters," Sirius muttered, and both James and Frank murmured a vague agreement. They stared at the floor in mutual frustration for a moment, and then Frank sighed heavily.

"All right," he said conversationally, with an ironic shrug, "now taking all _un_reasonable theories on who they are. When you rule out the impossible, and all that."

"Aliens," Sirius replied off-hand, and then had the gall to look offended when they both glared at him. "What? You said all unreasonable ones! At this point, _aliens_ is as good as any other."

"Time travelers," James added, matching Sirius's sardonic tone. "Although if they wanted to off Voldemort, why they would come here and not, you know, a few decades ago, is beyond me."

Frank rubbed his temples in an apparently failed attempt to ward off a headache. "Oh, let's round off the trifecta, what else is there, mole people?" he snapped sourly. "I meant, anything that doesn't match the evidence but is _an actual thing_."

"You're telling me you don't believe in aliens?" Sirius replied, with mock horror. "This changes _everything_ about our relationship."

"_Your third left rib is still fractured and I am in a position to break it fully without getting up from my seat can we please have a serious discussion_."

Silence fell, and drew out into a long pause as everyone tried to think in between throwing each other awkward glances. "Wandering group of do-gooders?" James offered finally, wincing. "I hear about muggle groups that go around in the night and drop off cakes and pies and things on poor people's doorstops?"

"Vigilantes," Sirius suggested, bouncing off James' wild guess. "Except instead of pie they leave... us."

"Actually, that might have some merit," he said thoughtfully, rolling the idea around in spite of its slightly _off_ taste. "They're a vigilante group, tracking Aurors and Death Eaters, trying to help us out wherever they can. They tell us that they answer to Dumbledore because everyone knows Dumbledore has eight million secret Order missions going on at a time, so it won't seem strange."

"But why?" Frank asked, tapping his chin. "Why would three young people throw everything away to take it upon themselves to do our jobs? Why not join the Aurors outright?"

"Evan said that there isn't anyone else who can do their mission," Sirius said slowly. "Do you think it's true, or is he delusional?"

"If they're vigilantes," James said, "I'd go with delusional."

"They didn't _seem_ crazy," Sirius countered, but without much assurance.

"They don't always," Frank answered, still musing. "But it's one thing to have one mad crusader. Three?"

"Madness is catching," Sirius muttered, and went unchallenged.

"So, which do we think is more likely? Deep-cover Unspeakables or half-crazed do-gooders?" James asked, but already knew. True to form:

"Unspeakables," Sirius said, at the same time that Frank said, "Vigilantes."

Neither of them looked surprised either, looking instead to him to cast the decisive vote. But James didn't _know_. Nothing they had thrown at the wall in this discussion had stuck, as far as he was concerned.

It wasn't that there were so many pieces missing, or even that they didn't know what the puzzle was supposed to be of. It was like, instead of a 600-piece puzzle that was missing half the box, they had a chest full of _thousands_ of puzzle pieces from _600_ different boxes, and were trying to put together _one_ image.

How much of what they found in the tent was relevant? Some things — the suitcase, most notably — definitely were, but the campsite they'd spent a week in was so cluttered with the detritus of four people's lives that it was hard to guess what mattered and what didn't. And worse, what mattered in what way, what pieces fit in what puzzle.

"I don't think we can rule out either," James replied slowly, and Sirius ran a hand over his face.

"Then what does your gut say?"

"Nothing," he answered. "I don't have a gut feeling about _anything_, except they're not out to hurt us."

"You have any better ideas?" Frank asked, half-hopeful and half-exasperated.

James bit his tongue. "_No_. It's just - you know how sometimes you get this mad craving for something to eat?" he explained, almost pleading for them to understand. "But everything you pick up turns your stomach? You don't know what you want, but nothing else will do?"

"Yeah," Sirius replied, wrinkling his nose and leaning back against the pillow. "Nothing really fits, but vigilantes _extra_-doesn't fit."

"Likewise with Unspeakables," Frank muttered, running a hand through his hair. "But we'll work with these ideas, see if we can at least rule them out, agreed?"

"Agreed," Sirius replied, and James mumbled something that passed for an agreement.

...What would either of those keep locked in a suitcase that only they could access?

He couldn't stop focusing on that. It was _such_ an anomaly, the only thing that didn't serve some kind of purpose, except to conceal a secret that James wouldn't have even known to look for otherwise. It was downright _sloppy_ — Unspeakables wouldn't be stupid enough to keep that sort of thing with them, and crazy vigilantes wouldn't go through that much trouble to protect it and then leave it out where it could be so easily found.

The _click_ was almost audible as it struck him.

They weren't _supposed_ to find the suitcase, or what was in it, but someone _wanted_ them to. Someone had gone out of their way to make sure that he found it, when no one else would see that he had, and that he would know its contents were A Secret.

It almost made him laugh: the only one who was trying to tell them the truth was the only one who hadn't promised not to lie.


End file.
